Dietary and Environmental Reconstruction with Stable Isotopes of Early, Middle and Late Holocene Humans from Northern Malawi

Summary

The early Holocene African humid period (AHP, ~12,000-6000 bp) was followed by the Middle Holocene dry phase (MHDP, ~6000-3500 BP), and the modern climatic regime was established during the later Holocene (~3500 bp to present). The relationship of environmental change to human social and territorial organization adaptations are fairly well-documented in northern, eastern and southern Africa. However, the Holocene terrestrial record of environmental change in east-central Africa is poorly documented. Stable carbon, nitrogen and oxygen isotope analyses of human bones and teeth from northern Malawi suggest that hunter-gatherers exploited humid closed woodlands during the AHP (low 13C, low 15N), drier more open habitats during the MHDP (higher 13C, very high 15N), and relatively closed, humid woodlands during the later Holocene (low 13C, low 15N). Iron Age peoples consumed substantial amounts C4 plants (high 13C, low 15N). Strontium isotope data for small subset of these skeletons are insufficient to reconstruct residential life histories. With a more detailed terrestrial environmental history, more human Sr isotope data and a strontium isoscape, it may be possible to test ecological models of hunter-gatherer social and territorial organization in changing Holocene environments in Malawi.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 21962